The Evolutionary Mystery of Early Animals Without Skeletons
📰 Original title: The first animals on Earth had no skeletons and that changes everything
🤖 IA: It's not clickbait ✅
👥 Usuarios: It's not clickbait ✅
View full AI summary: https://killbait.com/en/the-evolutionary-mystery-of-early-animals-without-skeletons/?redirpost=cd5c869b-735b-4fe7-892c-06ac21430ee1
Early #sponges were soft https://phys.org/news/2026-01-earth-early-sponges-soft-scientists.html
Independent origins of spicules reconcile paleontological and molecular evidence of sponge evolutionary history https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adx1754 by Maria Eleonora Rossi et al.
"the first sponges were soft-bodied and lacked mineralized skeletons. That's why we don't see sponge spicules in rocks from around 600 million years ago—there simply weren't any to preserve... spicules evolved independently in different sponge groups"
A large sponge, a cluster of anemones, and other life is seen nearly 230 meters deep at an area of the seabed that was very recently covered by the George VI Ice Shelf in Antarctica. Sponges can grow very slowly, sometimes less than two centimeters a year, so the size of this specimen suggests this community has been active for decades, perhaps even hundreds of years.
ROV SuBastian/Schmidt Ocean Institute
#Ancient #Sponges May Be #Earth’s First #Animals, New MIT Evidence Shows
https://scitechdaily.com/ancient-sponges-may-be-earths-first-animals-new-mit-evidence-shows/
MIT researchers traced chemical fossils in ancient rocks back to the ancestors of today’s demosponges. A team of geochemists at MIT has uncovered compelling signs in ancient rocks that some of Earth’s earliest animals may have been the predecessors of today’s sea sponges. In a study published
#Sponges are back at the root of the animal tree! I knew the cnidarians-as-root hypothesis was just too hard justify given the sum total of evidence.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adw9456
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